II

The Library was lined with shelves stacked high with neatly ordered scrolls and books. A heavy round table with a stone top stood in the centre, below a sky-lit dome, where Masha sat, huddled with the other Matrons, behind voluminous tomes of divination histories. They spoke in whispers, asking questions, scribbling notes and fighting over the ladders against the shelves.

As Matrons, their main task was to make sense of the gibberish the Oracles spoke, and then weave the future as a narrative in their journals. From personal experience, Masha knew the Oracles did not always make sense. And many a time they were wrong, for the future was an ever-changing sea, with the tiniest stone setting off the largest waves. This was where the Matrons came in, taking notes of visions from the hundred or so ordained Oracles, comparing and confirming their utterances, before charting the most consistent path that lay before the realm. The Oracles divined, the Matrons deciphered, and the Sisters decided. Their conclusions were ultimately sent to the Saptarishis, the Venerable Seven. What the Seven did with this information Masha did not know.

Too bad the boy had not survived the test. More clues would have been helpful. They had been given a month to uncover what the boy spoke of, and then confirm it with the visions of other Oracles. Masha, for one, intended to impress. A few, world-saving decodes and she could be the Matron who uncovered who this Son of Darkness was. Imagine that.

‘Who is the Peacock?’ she asked the Matron beside her, a woman of middling years with a twisted face and a missing eye. She was called Maimed Matron. The Sisters had not come out with the glass-bag routine in those days. ‘What is an olive wreath? Why can’t Oracles ever speak plain?’

‘Peacock is obviously Krishna,’ Burned Matron interjected before Maimed Matron could answer. A mosquito landed on her darkly singed cheek and strutted about like a conqueror. She didn’t notice. ‘Only he wears that hideous peacock feather in his crown. I used to see him in many of my own visions.’ She leaned in closer over the table. ‘Most of them came true, you know.’

‘Yes, the attack on the Eastern King. That was clever, Burned Matron,’ Maimed Matron nodded her head sagely.

Masha listened eagerly to the older women. She barely knew what they spoke of, but if she was to get ahead in the game, she needed to acquire vast knowledge as quickly as possible. When she used to have visions, no one had ever explained who she was seeing. She certainly had not seen anyone with a peacock feather. ‘Who is Krishna?’ she asked, also whispering.

‘Who is Krishna, she asks!’ Burned Matron scoffed.

Maimed Matron was kinder. ‘Krishna is quite the centrepiece to any divination you will decipher over the next few years, Little One. He was a cowherd in Mathura. Climbed to prominence through cunning, and deposed the King of Mathura in a coup to become King himself. As true a rags-to-riches story as you will ever encounter.’